50books_poc 7-8: Audre Lorde, Samuel R. Delaney
Lorde, Audre. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde.
in short: Audre Lorde was among other things a black West Indian(-American) lesbian radical feminist, who in feminist circles at least, is best known for the speech “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,” and was a great advocate of intersectionality in feminism. Her autobiography, which I am in the middle of reading Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is one of the many books that has been Amazon Rank'd.
She also wrote poetry.
in which it is all about me: The Collected Poems contain ten books of poetry, and more than 400 pages of poems, so I took my sweet time reading this, mostly between other books. Poetry is good for public transportation and being frustrated by your crashy laptop. Writings by West Indian lesbians, or just queer WOC of color in general, are so very relevant to my interests, so if anyone wants to point me in any one direction in comments feel more than free. *smile hopefully*
actual analysis: After careful consideration, I'm going to say my favorite books of poetry by Audre Lorde are The Black Unicorn and Our Dead Behind Us.
Lorde's style of writing is what I think you'd call academic poetry. When it's read aloud, it is with a low calm voice, even as it takes on some very heated subjects, which Lorde, you might guess, did not shy away from. I know that's not everyone's favorite mode of poetry.
Reading Lorde's earlier poems works best as a way to analyze her later writings. You can actually see her approach to line breaks and spacing change across books. This holds even more truth because Lorde often reproduced and edited earlier written poems in later books - sometimes more than once. So now poetry.
The first stanza in this one kills me:
”Lightly”
Don't make waves
is good advice
from a leaky boat.
One light year is the distance
one ray of light can travel in one year and
thirty
light years away from earth
in our infinitely offended universe
of waiting
an electronic cloud announces our presence
finally
to the unimpressable stars.
This is straight from Scientific American
on the planet earth
our human signature upon the universe
is an electronic cloud
of expanding 30-year-old television programs
like Howdy Doody Arthur Godfrey
Uncle Miltie and Hulahoops
quiz shows and wrestling midgets
baseball
the McCarthy hearings and Captain Kangaroo.
Now I don't know what
a conscious universe might be
but it is interesting to wonder
what will wave back
to all that.
Mutiple books of poetry in one means I get to quote more than one poem. Also, given the circumstances, (glares at Amazon) I think this post needs more homoeroticism:
“Political Relations”
In a hotel in Tashkent
the Latvian Delegate from Riga
was sucking his fishbones
as a Chukwu woman with hands as hot as mine
caressed my knee beneath the dinner table
her slanted eyes were dark as seal fur
we did not know each other's tongue.
“Someday we will talk through our children”
she said
“I spoke to your eyes this morning
you have such a beautiful face”
thin-lipped Moscow girls translated for us
smirking at each other.
And I had watched her in the Conference Hall
ox-solid black electric hair
straight as a deer's rein fire-disc eyes
sweeping over the faces
like a stretch of frozen tundra
we were two ends of one taught rope
stretched like a promise from her mouth
singing the friendship song
her people sang for greeting
There are only fourteen thousand of us left
it is a very sad thing it is a very sad thing
when any people any people dies
“Yes I heard you this morning”
I said reaching out from the place where we touched
poured her vodka an offering
which she accepted like roses
leaning across our white Russian interpreters
to kiss me softly upon my lips.
Then she got up and left
with the Latvian delegate from Riga.
“Litany for Survival”:
Delany, Samuel R. They Fly at Ciron.
in short: A short sf/f novel about a military campaign on a small village. The regularly peaceful villagers must turn to the mysterious Winged One who live high in the mountains for help.
in which it is all about me: So, when people need a good example of a POC sf/f author, they either go for Octavia E. Butler or Samuel R. Delany; the former dead, the latter inactive. Because I am a heathen, I haven't read either of them. Butler is this month's choice for reading circle and to accompany Kindred I picked out a couple of Delaney novels at random for myself.
(OT: Delaney's beard is epic. My first thought upon seeing it is that he and Alan Moore should fight. For what I'm not sure. Best pornfiction writer?)
actual analysis: This book is advertised as a new old(!) Delaney work. An old manuscript that Delaney never got around to publishing and then much later expanded and edited. I wasn't much a fan of Delaney's prose style, and I don't know if that's a fault of his with this one book, his failing in general, or just a quirk of preference for me.
(Sci-fi authors have never been my favorite, a lot of them seem to have good ideas, but the technical skills of writing - description, characterization, etc. - could use polishing. And then outside of sf/f there are people who have beautifully written boring-ass books. My life, so hard.)
I enjoyed the different sections taking on spirituality and mythology in his fictional world, because I am a sucker for that kind of thing. The character I found most interesting was Uk, your average genocidal soldier going along and doing the best job he knows how. I didn't sympathize with him at all, but he was at least interesting.
None of this maters though, because -
(STOP HERE IF YOU ARE ESPECIALLY SQUICKED BY FURRY!SEX AND/OR DO NOT WANT SPOILERS)
Rahm had already noted, upon landing, that it was a lot easier to tell the sex of the Winged Ones - strong young female or male - who'd just carried him. From the giggling together of those waiting to ferry him about, or others who had just finished, Rahm realized - with sudden humor - that, somehow, with them, this flying and carrying was a sexual game: and some others, he saw now, didn't approve! (87-8)
That was in the main body of the story, and, thankfully, went no further until past the epilogue.
The first thing to know is that the cover of They Fly at Ciron is such a gross misreprestation of what the Winged Ones look like, it should be illegal. On the cover, they look like something Michaelangelo might have painted, with arms fading into feathered wings. In the book, they're wings are leathery, they have hearing far better than any humans, are wide-nosed, and out-size humans. Their bodies are furred, and their speaking voices are high, and they screech. Basically, they're oversized, vaguely humanoid bats.
I was so glad that Delaney didn't go there in the main, story which had slash vibes all over the interspecies pairings, that I was lulled into a false sense of security. :(
After the epilogue, which is only related to the story in the loosest fashion, we get Return to Ciron, which is special not only for being a gratuitous interspecies sex story, but also for technically being an orgy.
I need so much brain-bleach now.
in short: Audre Lorde was among other things a black West Indian(-American) lesbian radical feminist, who in feminist circles at least, is best known for the speech “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,” and was a great advocate of intersectionality in feminism. Her autobiography, which I am in the middle of reading Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is one of the many books that has been Amazon Rank'd.
She also wrote poetry.
in which it is all about me: The Collected Poems contain ten books of poetry, and more than 400 pages of poems, so I took my sweet time reading this, mostly between other books. Poetry is good for public transportation and being frustrated by your crashy laptop. Writings by West Indian lesbians, or just queer WOC of color in general, are so very relevant to my interests, so if anyone wants to point me in any one direction in comments feel more than free. *smile hopefully*
actual analysis: After careful consideration, I'm going to say my favorite books of poetry by Audre Lorde are The Black Unicorn and Our Dead Behind Us.
Lorde's style of writing is what I think you'd call academic poetry. When it's read aloud, it is with a low calm voice, even as it takes on some very heated subjects, which Lorde, you might guess, did not shy away from. I know that's not everyone's favorite mode of poetry.
Reading Lorde's earlier poems works best as a way to analyze her later writings. You can actually see her approach to line breaks and spacing change across books. This holds even more truth because Lorde often reproduced and edited earlier written poems in later books - sometimes more than once. So now poetry.
The first stanza in this one kills me:
”Lightly”
Don't make waves
is good advice
from a leaky boat.
One light year is the distance
one ray of light can travel in one year and
thirty
light years away from earth
in our infinitely offended universe
of waiting
an electronic cloud announces our presence
finally
to the unimpressable stars.
This is straight from Scientific American
on the planet earth
our human signature upon the universe
is an electronic cloud
of expanding 30-year-old television programs
like Howdy Doody Arthur Godfrey
Uncle Miltie and Hulahoops
quiz shows and wrestling midgets
baseball
the McCarthy hearings and Captain Kangaroo.
Now I don't know what
a conscious universe might be
but it is interesting to wonder
what will wave back
to all that.
Mutiple books of poetry in one means I get to quote more than one poem. Also, given the circumstances, (glares at Amazon) I think this post needs more homoeroticism:
“Political Relations”
In a hotel in Tashkent
the Latvian Delegate from Riga
was sucking his fishbones
as a Chukwu woman with hands as hot as mine
caressed my knee beneath the dinner table
her slanted eyes were dark as seal fur
we did not know each other's tongue.
“Someday we will talk through our children”
she said
“I spoke to your eyes this morning
you have such a beautiful face”
thin-lipped Moscow girls translated for us
smirking at each other.
And I had watched her in the Conference Hall
ox-solid black electric hair
straight as a deer's rein fire-disc eyes
sweeping over the faces
like a stretch of frozen tundra
we were two ends of one taught rope
stretched like a promise from her mouth
singing the friendship song
her people sang for greeting
There are only fourteen thousand of us left
it is a very sad thing it is a very sad thing
when any people any people dies
“Yes I heard you this morning”
I said reaching out from the place where we touched
poured her vodka an offering
which she accepted like roses
leaning across our white Russian interpreters
to kiss me softly upon my lips.
Then she got up and left
with the Latvian delegate from Riga.
“Litany for Survival”:
Click to viewDelany, Samuel R. They Fly at Ciron.
in short: A short sf/f novel about a military campaign on a small village. The regularly peaceful villagers must turn to the mysterious Winged One who live high in the mountains for help.
in which it is all about me: So, when people need a good example of a POC sf/f author, they either go for Octavia E. Butler or Samuel R. Delany; the former dead, the latter inactive. Because I am a heathen, I haven't read either of them. Butler is this month's choice for reading circle and to accompany Kindred I picked out a couple of Delaney novels at random for myself.
(OT: Delaney's beard is epic. My first thought upon seeing it is that he and Alan Moore should fight. For what I'm not sure. Best pornfiction writer?)
actual analysis: This book is advertised as a new old(!) Delaney work. An old manuscript that Delaney never got around to publishing and then much later expanded and edited. I wasn't much a fan of Delaney's prose style, and I don't know if that's a fault of his with this one book, his failing in general, or just a quirk of preference for me.
(Sci-fi authors have never been my favorite, a lot of them seem to have good ideas, but the technical skills of writing - description, characterization, etc. - could use polishing. And then outside of sf/f there are people who have beautifully written boring-ass books. My life, so hard.)
I enjoyed the different sections taking on spirituality and mythology in his fictional world, because I am a sucker for that kind of thing. The character I found most interesting was Uk, your average genocidal soldier going along and doing the best job he knows how. I didn't sympathize with him at all, but he was at least interesting.
None of this maters though, because -
(STOP HERE IF YOU ARE ESPECIALLY SQUICKED BY FURRY!SEX AND/OR DO NOT WANT SPOILERS)
Rahm had already noted, upon landing, that it was a lot easier to tell the sex of the Winged Ones - strong young female or male - who'd just carried him. From the giggling together of those waiting to ferry him about, or others who had just finished, Rahm realized - with sudden humor - that, somehow, with them, this flying and carrying was a sexual game: and some others, he saw now, didn't approve! (87-8)
That was in the main body of the story, and, thankfully, went no further until past the epilogue.
The first thing to know is that the cover of They Fly at Ciron is such a gross misreprestation of what the Winged Ones look like, it should be illegal. On the cover, they look like something Michaelangelo might have painted, with arms fading into feathered wings. In the book, they're wings are leathery, they have hearing far better than any humans, are wide-nosed, and out-size humans. Their bodies are furred, and their speaking voices are high, and they screech. Basically, they're oversized, vaguely humanoid bats.
I was so glad that Delaney didn't go there in the main, story which had slash vibes all over the interspecies pairings, that I was lulled into a false sense of security. :(
After the epilogue, which is only related to the story in the loosest fashion, we get Return to Ciron, which is special not only for being a gratuitous interspecies sex story, but also for technically being an orgy.
I need so much brain-bleach now.